1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to medical devices, and more particularly, to the automated collection of operational data from distributed medical devices.
2. Related Art
The rate of advancement in technologies such as electronic packaging and assembly, semiconductors, microprocessors, and related technologies is accelerating. In the medical device industry such advancements are often motivated by a desire to miniaturize components to improve the mobility and/or portability of medical devices while simultaneously providing improved performance and increased functionality.
There are far-reaching consequences to improving the mobility or portability of medical devices, ranging from greater patient independence and quality of life to measurable cost savings. For example, a ventilator, defibrillator, ventricular assist device, infusion pump, blood pressure monitor, pacemaker, blood insulin monitor, and other medical devices may now follow a patient from the emergency room to the surgical facility to a recovery room and to their residence without interruption of therapy. Demographic, economic and other indicators suggest that this trend will continue to enable medical devices to travel with the patient outside of a medical facility thereby enabling the devices to perform their test, treatment, monitoring or other therapeutic functions.
More recently, there has been a desire or need to retrieve data from distributed medical devices to monitor the condition of the patient as well as the operational status and performance of the device, as well as to determine whether the device requires maintenance or modification. However it has traditionally been a challenge to collect such operational data.
Take, for example, prosthetic hearing devices such as hearing aids, middle ear implants, Cochlear™ implants, and the like. A hallmark of such devices since their inception has been their ability to provide increased functionality in a small package that is implanted and/or carrier on the body of the patient (commonly referred to as a “recipient”). Obtaining patient data stored in such devices, as well as to obtain information regarding the performance of the device has traditionally required the recipient to visit a medical facility to provide an audiologist or other health-care professional access to the device.
More recently, and for certain manufacturers seeking information regarding the medical devices they produce, patients and/or health-care professionals have been able to transmit certain information to the device manufacturer via mail, facsimile or, more recently, the Internet. Also, operational data associated with the use of prosthetic hearing devices and other medical devices is often fragmented, inaccurate, subjective, incomplete and/or not timely obtained.
Although there are many benefits associated with the more current approach of using the Internet, for example, by providing a website for entering user data, such an approach is not without its drawbacks. For example, this approach is not ideal for less confident users, and it is subject to the user to remember to enter the user data, as well as the ability if individual users to accurately enter the data. As a result, only a small segment of the user community will provide accurate and timely feedback. In addition, conventional web sites capture user data regardless of format or content, increasing the likelihood that such user data will be misinterpreted or inaccurate. Furthermore, conventional feedback mechanisms are often not objective representations of user data. As a result, operational data is often not made available to the appropriate person at the appropriate time.